The selective outrage of the white, western media:

The selective outrage of the white, western media:

by Samuel Mack-Poole

It really has been a strange couple of weeks with regard to the western media’s agenda. It has, to borrow a phrase from Lewis Carroll, gotten curiouser and curiouser. It seems that there is a most eccentric hierarchy of western empathy, whereby Cecil the lion inhabits the highest status and Sandra Bland the least. Also, let us not forget the children of Gaza, the victims of American drones, those murdered in churches by white supremacist terrorists and the migrants at the Calais border are all lower in the hierarchy of empathy than a poached wild cat.

What is fascinating about participating on social media is the way in which one can adopt a cause through changing one’s profile picture to popularise a cause. I noticed something quite startling when I conducted a not so scientific experiment. I went through my Facebook Friend’s list and identified that every single person whom had changed their profile picture was a white woman.  Conversely, when I did a similar search for Sandra Bland profile pictures, only three of my friends whom had changed their profile picture to her were white women.

Interestingly, no one whom had changed their profile pictures to either were white men. I guess you can read into that what you will.

When I commented on this sense of white outrage, an awesome debate commenced. If this debate had a title, I would coin it Privileged and Prejudiced.  My reasons for this is that the debate, somewhat sadly – but also predictably -- was divided pretty much along racial lines (with myself being a notable exception). Those criticising the very selective sense of white outrage at Cecil the lion’s killing were black, and those commenting upon the animal right’s outrage were white.

A number of my white friends and family were making comments such as, “Both events are equally bad.”  I have to admit that whilst I didn’t agree with Cecil the lion’s untimely death, I certainly didn’t feel that it was commensurate to Sandra Bland’s most suspicious death in police custody.  I gave a hypothetical example:

You are locked in a room with an explosive device around your neck. This explosive device will be detonated unless you pick up a gun and kill either a lion or a human being, both of which have been tethered to the wall.

I left it to them to elect which option they would choose, but I was pretty certain that the vast majority of human beings would elect to kill the lion rather than the human. There are different reasons for this inherent human bias, but I think we’re more likely to save our own species as humans possess the most developed sense of consciousness and because of selfishness at the evolutionary level with regard to species preservation.

So, what interests me is the fact that this inherent bias we are born with seems to have been eradicated by the insidious tentacles of the western media machine.With regard to the human mind, it is not the best kept secret that it is extremely sensitive to its environment, or, in other words, propaganda.  As such, we have to face up to the fact that the right-wing press has an agenda. Now, when I talk of agenda, I talk of social values which the media promotes.

Again, it is not exactly a secret that the right-wing press is dominant in the UK:  The Sun is the best-selling newspaper. The Daily Mail is the second best-selling, and the Daily Telegraph is the most popular broadsheet.

All of the papers espouse similar values: blind patriotism, vilification of immigrants, hatred of the under-class, anti-union rhetoric, Zionism, and a lack of social consciousness.  Thus, when papers such as these run stories in such a way which provokes outrage, my dubious eyebrow raises to an Everest-like height. I honestly feel as if we deal with the politics of distraction with the media agenda, without sounding like too much of a conspiracy theorist.

With all the tragedy in the world, why is that the plight of a singular lion trumps that of human suffering? How telling it is that most of the people reading this know the name of the lion which was poached, but couldn’t tell me a single name of one of Dylann Storm’s terror shooting?

The central issue is that of coverage, and also of prominence. Do we see the victims of American drone attacks on the front of The Sun? We never have, and I would state that we never will. As a consequence, the average westerner lives in an odd bubble where the very real problems faced by other human beings just don’t reach us. It is as if we inhabit a luxurious space habitat, like that in the film Elysium where a decadent, privileged class are so far removed from war-ravaged Earth that they couldn’t possibly empathise with the poverty faced on the ground.

If the average citizen of the UK doesn’t know of the suffering faced by black people in America, and they’ve never humanised the plight of someone whom has suffered, the result is depressing; there is a systemic lack of empathy for the victims of geo-politics, and not only is there a lack of empathy, there is outright revulsion.

If we take the latest fiasco at Calais, with David Cameron describing human beings who are most likely trying to escape war torn countries and make a better life for themselves as a ‘swarm’, and the Daily Telegraph reporting the cost of transporting of the lucky few whom make it through at up to ‘£150 a day not being unusual’, it’s easy to see the reduction of the plight of fellow human beings to mere economic cost. For if it’s one thing the British immigration-phobic public detests, it is impoverished human beings trying to make a better life for themselves.

We are also behoved to remember that the most serious problem the UK faces isn’t a corrupt taxation system, a suspected paedophile ring in parliament or the semi-privatisation of the NHS, but a trickle of asylum seekers.

Empathy and fraternity are words which have vanished from the British lexicon.

To conclude, I will argue, as I have always done, for the rights of the oppressed, rather than in bourgeois causes which soothe the feelings of selective outrage for white, middle-class England. I shall always humanise those whom have been forgotten or buried by the machinations of the media, because if I can make an iota of difference, then it’s a life well lived.